It's not the Zubaz: Tigers have a little more fun while the snap losing skid

Torii Hunter tried to disprove the ‘Curse of the Zubaz’ before Friday’s game, just having fun. More importantly, the Tigers had a little fun in the game, beating the Red Sox, in part thanks to a Hunter home run.
TED S. WARREN — The Associated Press file photo

DETROIT >> It’s not the Zubaz. So, now we’ve cleared that up. Those silly little Tiger-striped sweatsuits or pajama suits — whatever you want to call them — were not to blame for the Detroit Tigers’ recent malaise.

Torii Hunter conducted an experiment Friday, and proved those suits — the knowledge of which burst into the national consciousness the last time the Tigers faced the Red Sox on national TV, and wore them on that ill-fated trip from Boston to Cleveland — weren’t to blame, as the Tigers beat the BoSox again on national TV.

“Today we came with a lot of energy, tried to change up some things. I wore my Zubaz, just let them know that doesn’t mean anything. I’m going to wear it anyway. We had a lot of fun today before the game, and it carried over on the field,” said Hunter, who was the first to wear the suits that had gotten more than a fair share of the blame for the 4-13 streak before Friday’s win.

“First time. ... I tried to get everybody to wear it, and they were like ‘NO, man!’ But I wore them today and I’m going to wear them again. Don’t mean anything.”

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Cancel the bonfire to burn the evidence of the ‘Zubaz Curse.’

Even the guy who’d gotten the suits for everyone to wear, Joba Chamberlain, wanted to stress that message.

“People out there shouldn’t be blaming the Zubaz. It was never the Zubaz,” the reliever said. “The Zubaz was just a way to have some fun. This is a long, long season, and you spend a lot of time together. You have to find some ways to relax and get through everything, and that was just something that lightened the mood. No one wore it after the flight to Cleveland, and I told Torii to make sure not to fall asleep in it today, but it made guys laugh. That’s all this is about.”

It was just that — fun.

For the first time in nearly four weeks, it looked like the Tigers were finally having some, as they bashed out a 6-2 win, slugging three home runs, one by Hunter himself.

“Obviously, we needed it. It felt good to go out there. You saw us smiling, and having fun,” Hunter said. “The last couple days, you could kind of see where we were tired. You could see some guys — not putting their heads down, but just didn’t have the same energy. I can blame myself, as well.”

That was the thing that manager Brad Ausmus was worried most about his team in the bad patch — that guys in the middle of the collective slump would treat it more like a job than just a game, and begin to press.

“Certainly hitting the home runs energizes the team. But the truth is, before the game, this team is always upbeat. They don’t have their tail between their legs. They’re not dragging their way out to the field,” Ausmus said. “I think part of it is because this is a veteran group, and part of it is because these guys believe in themselves, regardless of what’s happened in the past couple of weeks.”

It certainly helped that Friday’s starter, Drew Smyly, pitched better than he has in weeks. And it certainly helped that the bats woke up.

It also helped that there were none of those “here we go again” moments that can suck the life out of a team that’s already treading water.

It helped that Joe Nathan — who’s struggled as mightily as anyone in this stretch — pitched a nearly perfect ninth inning, albeit not in a save situation.

But the key still seemed to be that the Tigers were having fun.

“It makes it easier to go home and go to bed,” Ausmus said. “You never know how a win is going to affect you long-term, until you play out the next handful of games. I hope it gets us rolling.”

It hasn’t been a lack of concentration or effort on the part of the players — that’s something that Ausmus would address immediately, he said. He has addressed a few outlying cases.

Probably without histrionics, though.

“In those cases, I addressed it,” Ausmus said. “I talked to them just to make it clear that we were all on the same page and we can’t have this happen again. But yelling? This isn’t a youth travel team. Yelling at them isn’t going to get very far. I don’t even think yelling at a youth travel team gets very far.”

Ausmus has spoken with the team more than once, though. One was after the last homestand, before they arrived on the West Coast for series in Oakland and Seattle.

One was more recently.

“We had a meeting just a couple days ago and he just lifted us up,” Hunter said Friday night. “He told us to keep fighting and believe in yourself. He had everything positive to say. You saw it today. It showed today.”

All positive? No yelling, no chair-kicking, no butt-chewing?

“Brad Ausmus has had a lot of kick-in-the-ass moments. A couple days ago, he got on our butts. We respect him. We love him. We’re going to go out there and play hard for him, because he’s just a great guy. You don’t want to play like this for him. You don’t want to play like this for yourself,” Hunter said.

“I tell people all the time, we’re going through this little funk, and we’re going to come out looking and smelling like roses, after a while. Because this was a storm. Now we know what it looks like, what it smells like — we don’t want to taste that again.”

As long as they’re having fun, and that translates into winning, who cares what the Tigers wear?